Dalai Lama Quotes

People tend to measure themselves by external accomplishments, but jail allows a person to focus on internal ones; such as honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, generosity and an absence of variety. You learn to look into yourself.

Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.

When you practice Buddhism, you have to always self-reflect, and you can't avoid your problems. That makes me understand human beings better. I feel that the more I do that in my own life, the more I can see how to play a character.

I always used to be like, 'I don't need to meditate.' And it's not true.

The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

Whoever will cultivate their own mind will find full employment. Every virtue does not only require great care in the planting, but as much daily solicitude in cherishing as exotic fruits and flowers; the vices and passions (which I am afraid are the natural product of the soil) demand perpetual weeding. Add to this the search after knowledge. . . and the longest life is too short.

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

What is tragic today is that there is a number of Muslims who think that all the solutions are to be found simply by external actions. They don't have to do anything within themselves. This is a deeply Western idea - modern, Western idea, where you try to improve the world without improving yourself. And this is what the Muslims who talk about others putting their heads in the sand and that "We are doing jihad and we are political" and so forth, they are emulating a very important mistake of modernism.

Meditation may require a lifetime to master, but it will have been a lifetime well spent. ... If you want to judge your progress, ask yourself these questions: Am I more loving? Is my judgment sounder? Do I have more energy? Can my mind remain calm under provocation? Am I free from the conditioning of anger, fear, and greed? Spiritual awareness reveals itself as eloquently in character development and selfless action as in mystical states.

I'm trying to grow older with wisdom.

O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.

Self-awareness is a key to self-mastery

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence—which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence.

My everyday job is about superficial beauty, but when I'm not working I prefer to work on my inner beauty - I read a lot, I try to learn.

If you're an athlete and you completely focus on the body, you're missing other components. Similarly, if you're trying to broaden your mind but not also being attentive to your sense of humour and your spirit, then you're not going to grow and develop so fast.

People talk about this 'bucket list': 'I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.' Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to be conscious and observe and understand me and the people around me as much as I can.

I've been in therapy. I know enough about myself now to know that I really don't need to know anymore.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

I think that there is a tragic misfit at the core of me, and I've just done a lot of work on myself. I love a good self-help book; I've read a ton of them. I love self-help seminars and therapy and all that.

The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended.

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable... I hope I have that going forward.

I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.